Talk:Pope John Paul II
Why not say "third-longest of all time"? On the scale of papal history Pius IX was fairly recent. Turtle Fan 07:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC) :Who was the longest, then? TR 15:32, 4 April 2008 (UTC) Pius IX. John Paul II seems to have been number two all time. I just find "Since Pius IX" odd since that cuts off over 90% of Papal history. Turtle Fan 00:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC) :It doesn't say "since", it says "after Pius IX". TR 02:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC) Even stranger, and even less accurate. Turtle Fan 12:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC) :No, perfectly accurate. TR 15:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC) No, he was second-longest of all time, not third-longest in a very small window of papal history. They're mutually exclusive. Turtle Fan 06:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC) :I edited it because if you are having a hard time with it, others will. But I suspect most would read that as what the author intended: Pius IX was first, John Paul II was second. Nothing in the original phrase lent itself to a narrow time frame. It's perfectly acceptable grammar to say "blank is second after" and have it mean that blank is second, period. TR 15:49, 6 April 2008 (UTC) Damndest thing, I just came in here to assert that he was #3 on the all-time list. Now I'm all confused. And in reviewing the above, I have concluded that your original word usage was correct. Not sure why it confused me, though I remember being somewhat tired on April 6. (April 5, on the other hand, was a very pleasant day indeed.) Turtle Fan 06:31, 2 January 2009 (UTC) :I have since found the "blank-longest after blank" wording, freely lifted from other sources, rather unnecessary, especially for our purposes. If people need to know who the longest was, they can find it elsewhere. TR 15:58, 2 January 2009 (UTC) ::So we're reconciled! And I'm sure the Pope would be delighted to know the role he played in increasing the peace and harmony of the world. Turtle Fan 17:01, 2 January 2009 (UTC) :::Not a Catholic, or a fan of the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility, but John Paul II came the closest to fullfilling that Doctrine. TR 17:14, 2 January 2009 (UTC) ::::Kind of you to say. Turtle Fan 18:22, 2 January 2009 (UTC) Hot War Surprised HT has resisted the temptation to play with this cameo for as long as he has. I did hear him preach once, and he was definitely not a firebrand. Granted, he was more than forty years older than he would have been in the book, and in no condition to pound on pulpits. And of course he had a very, very different audience than he did in the book. But nothing I know of him suggests even an early history of either aggressive nationalism or fire-and-brimstone. At most I could see him being compassionate enough to speak words that he knew would comfort people living in terror of something they would not be able to escape by their own actions, but even then, it didn't quite fit. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:22, July 7, 2017 (UTC) :I think that many years ago I read that he was just nationalist enough in his youth that he could have pounded the pulpit. But I cannot cite any sources on that. Obviously, as pope he was antagonistic to the Soviets, but it's harder to pin down where his Polish nationalism would have ended and his status as world leader would have begun. TR (talk) 04:45, July 7, 2017 (UTC) ::Oh he loved his country, there's no doubt of that. He wanted it out of the Soviet orbit. That may have been his position as a world leader, but few would be naïve to suggest it was just a happy coincidence that this aligned with his personal experiences. ::Preaching violence, though? Doesn't really seem in his line. Still, I could be wrong, and this is alternate history, after all. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:09, July 7, 2017 (UTC)